Chris Bamford

In April 2023, a couple of us had a layover in Vancouver and Peter was kind enough to fetch us at the airport that morning in his wonderful Russell. We had breakfast, kicked tires at some mutual friends' shop, and were delivered back to YVR in good time to catch our connecting flight. Best six-hour layover in history. Brief video on the road: https://youtu.be/aCJAhJxxO6k Read more on the first and last pages of our local club newsletter: https://www.eacc.ca/newsletter-may2023.html

All that woodwork on the sides gives me a hankering for waffles... pass the maple syrup!

Must be different down there. City streets here are pretty much dry now, and they’re using some kind of reduced-salt alternative treatment. Country roads were either bare or packed/frozen solid.

The WBD Gang rode again, on a sunny, just above freezing holiday Monday. 1911 Cadillac 30, 1924 Ford T Speedster, 1930 Hudson Eight and 1930 Ford A Truck. A young family at our mid-run stretch stop had some unexpected thrills with photo-ops, exploring the Hudson and a taste of vintage motoring, Cadillac-style (short video here: https://youtu.be/Nx7vIT0VzDA. Team Speedster covered 59 miles door-to-door and hit an exhilarating 64 mph on the way home. Lots of fun for everyone!

Thanks all for your interest and comments. Bloo: Yes, a 'Plodge". Postwar Canadian-market Dodges were badge-engineered Plymouths. I use a US-market Plymouth P15 workshop manual. Crusty: No empty seats expected next year, but if you show up in an oldie we'll convoy together 🙂. Craig: We should meet sometime. Red Deer maybe? Peter: The Grand Forks tour sounds like a lot of fun. Busy time for us here, but a solid maybe. Peter, BTW, was responsible for for one of my favourite Vintage Motoring Memories of 2023: at 7:30 one brisk April morning he and a friend rolled up to Vancouver International Airport in his 1910 Russell Model 22 sleeve-valve touring... picked us up for breakfast and some great tire-kicking at a mutual friend's shop. Best six-hour layover ever!

I've been following the saga of the 1934 Packard V12 with considerable interest... particularly the thread drift around restomods and all the efforts that can go into upgrades for speed, comfort, safety, whatever. All fine and good for those who crave that sort of thing, but I gravitate towards cars and usage that reflect the times when these cars were just used (often very used) cars. Remember decades ago when we would pile a few buddies into our beater and take off for an overnight somewhere? We didn't care about the weather or the roads, everybody chipped in for gas, we stayed in a cheap motel, everyone drove. The car ran and drove and stopped OK, the heater was marginal and the radio was crap (but the clock still worked!). And we used paper maps. That's the kind of trip we had last weekend and it was a hoot! Four of us drove my '47 Dodge from Edmonton, AB to Lethbridge AB and back for the SAACAC Early Bird Swap Meet on Saturday, Feb 10. Total distance 688 miles, target cruising speed 50-52 mph, moving average 42.6, top speed 59 and the old heap never missed a beat. Daylight, night running, fog, two-lane, four-lane, gravel, whatever. The swap meet was well attended and there were probably were some other oldies in the lot but I never saw 'em. Fun Stuff.

That information is lost to the mists of time. My takeaway was that whoever was their supplier had sloppy QC.

My one experience with RA was ordering brake cylinders and hoses for my ‘47 Dodge D25 (Canadian, and a badge-engineered Plymouth) about 2010. All the parts fit OK but there were considerable metal shavings in the master cylinder.

After a couple weeks of -20°C to -38C weather, the cold broke just in time that we got our monthly drive in under sunny skies and well-above-freezing temperatures. This inevitably meant trading frozen fingers for sloppy roads and dirty windshields but nobody seemed to mind. Our line up was a little different today... Ford Tourings 1911, 1915 and 1926 and a 1927 McLaughlin-Buick (Canadian) rumble-seat roadster. Only mechanical issue was a broken leather fan belt in the M-B; baling wire staples to the rescue. Team '26 Ford clocked 86.2 miles door to door — plenty in that rather modest front seat!

1912 KisselKar 4-50. Tractorized around WW2, parked soon after, purchased in 1993.

I was committed to driving dignitaries (and their grandchildren) in the parade that kicks off our local summer fair a few years ago. This was an obligation I looked forward to every year for a couple decades until our parade was discontinued during the pandemic. Anyway, the forecast the day before was for rain the next morning, and they were not mistaken. My 1912 KisselKar has lovely leather upholstery c/w proper horsehair stuffing so something had to be done... two hours work and multiple large heavy black 'contractors clean-up' garage bags, duct tape and assorted bits of twine and bungees yielded a very passable set of water-impervious plastic seat covers and the upholstery came through unscathed. Other times and other cars, one just has to dress for the weather. It's remarkable what some people do for fun...

We had Bookmobile service in the early '60s, despite living in a city of 360,000 and having a bricks-and-mortar branch library just three miles away. Our bookmobile was in a converted city transit bus. Prior to the converted bus(s?), the City of Edmonton operated an eight-wheeled "Library Car", converted in 1941 from a circa-1909 streetcar. It served the NW suburb of Calder from 1941 to 1947 when that line was abandoned and the car subsequently scrapped. Here is that unusual streetcar in the late '40s, parked at the north terminus of the northern-most streetcar track in the Western Hemisphere:

Thank you Jon, that is very helpful and of course makes perfect sense. My carb is 2-11/16 across the bolt centres, so a BB1D model. It would seem from your initial comments that this unit is a little small for my 373 in3 engine. Is that a reasonable assumption? I max out around 50 mph which is 1,500 rpm in OD. Comfortable open road speed is 45 in OD.

Count me as one here who DIDN'T know that, and I'm not even an heir 🙂. I've run a BB1 (unknown model) on my 373 in3, 1,500 rpm max, 1912 KisselKar 4-50 since 1997. The car has always started and run well by my standards, although I have little basis for direct comparison. My standard practice is to give a quick pump or two when starting from cold; starting from warm I generally open the throttle fully, retard the spark fully and hit the starter for quick results. I for one am very interested in how to better start and run the car with this carb and why pumping the footfeed is not recommended. Photos below in case there is anything specific to my unit worthy of comment. I apologize if my post and request is divergent to the topic at hand, and would gladly start another thread or take it off-forum. Thank you Jon for doing this research and for being so willing to collect and share your deep and valuable expertise.

From the snow around it, not driven that season at least. It was adjacent to a rural driveway, so my guess is non-operating yard/shoulder art.

We saw a number of oldies parked along one of the older alignments of the Alaska Highway (the main highway had been straightened but the old road was still in use serving country residential). Here is a typical example:

Here is a memorable grade part-way along the Alaska Highway... looking uphill in 1942 and going down in 2012:

Exactly! 1947 Dodge D25, Canadian-built. Plymouth sheet metal, Dodge-look grill but with Plymouth profile. Dawson Creek was four days drive south of the 112-mile ice road leading to Tuktoyaktuk on the Beaufort Sea, furthest north one can drive in mainland Canada. The seasonal ice road has since been replaced with an all-weather gravel road.

Nope

Nice find! Here is the Dawson Creek Mile Zero sign, March 2012 version. Name the car?

0.316 is basically 5/16”. There is no dimension on that spring that looks like 5/16” to me. Are you sure?

An interesting and varied collection for sure. Thank you for posting They must be going for the Shoehorn (Most Cars Per Square Foot) Award. For my taste, fewer cars with more space between would add a lot to the visitor experience. Likewise the verbose signage — IMO cutting the word count by 75% would impart more information to the casual visitor. Few people will wade through all that text, particularly at floor level, unless there is a real interest in a specific vehicle.

The WBD gang goes out driving in pre-'32 cars at least once a month through the winter here in the Edmonton area. Our December drive was today, in pleasant, near-freezing temperatures and on mostly clear country roads. Our core group is three, and we encourage others to join us in the empty seats, or their own vehicles, but nothing newer than 1931. Today we were four cars and eight souls, a very nice group. Longest distance was my KisselKarfull of four, as we had the longest run to get to the muster point. Our total milage was around 50, the others around half. We kicked tires at the muster garage, had our country drive, ate lunch and went our separate ways. A very nice way to spend Boxing Day. 1930 Hudson 8, 1930 Model A, 1926/7 Model T and the 1912 KisselKar. It has been unseasonably warm and dry so far this winter; we might pay for it when we go driving in January!

"Ever sacrifice a nice vintage car to the salt monster as a winter beater?" Yes, although we don't use much salt here. I run two cars as year 'round, any-weather transportation: the '26 T Touring since 2006 and the '47 Dodge since 1991. They're both dressed up for Christmas and ready to go. The garage mats are new this season and something I should have done years ago.

So, there are five cars in my collection, four acquired in the early '90s and one in 2006. The other day, I added up all the ages and divided by five... turns out they average 100 years old, a tidy century each for a total of half a millennium. Whodathunkit? Yesterday was one of those perfect storm days: clear streets, sunny, temps barely above freezing, and all my heaps roadworthy and eager to go (not that there isn't a robust to-do list for every one of 'em 🙂). Not sure if I've every driven them all in a single day, but what better time to carpe the diem? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1924 Ford T Speedster (click) 26.8 miles: picked up my friend-for-60-years Gordon for a fun trip down memory lane in the neighbourhood and nearby arterials (and high speed of the day at 56.5 mph). 1947 Dodge sedan (click) 4.4 miles: Off to Home Depot with Lady Michelle for some 3/4" plywood then SuperStore for groceries. I have no truck; the mighty Dodge has carried almost everything up top including a 16' garage door. 1906 Orient Buckboard (click*) 1.8 miles: With a comfortable cruising speed of 14 mph, the wee Orient is mostly a neighbourhood car. Michelle again and our destination was the Westmount Community League "Vintage Christmas Market" down at the hall for some early shopping. *Note this link needs an update; the car has since enjoyed a comprehensive fettling and new drive chains. 1926 Ford T Touring (click) 8.5 miles: dozens have had their first taste of Model T riding and/or driving in this car. Gordon #2 had the honours yesterday, and proved that being a brilliant electrical engineer is NO guarantee of success with planetary transmissions and hand throttles. Good thing we never left the side streets! 1912 KisselKar 4-50 (click) 5.5 miles: My pride and joy and hands down favourite... Michelle and I went for a late spin up and down nearby Groat Road with its four lanes of delightful curves, hills and bridges and only one little old stop sign. Yee-Haawww! All in all, a real fun day, and as always I am ever so grateful to my beloved Michelle for putting up with all this nuttiness for all these years (38 this Wednesday!)